tion eight Englishmen, three Japanese interpreters, and two native servants,
Among the Englishmen was Adams, whom the company were very glad to
employ at a liberal salary. The Protestant factories—Dutch and English__
were thus neighbors at Eirando, while the Portuguese were at D:zima, in the
harbor of Nagasaki, and bore them no good will.
The English, however, soon gained the friendship and confidence of the
natives, and Cockes paid more than one visit to the Emperor at Jeddo. He
remained in the country many years, and, as it would appear from his letters,
(printed in Purchas,) had ultimately trouble with his Dutch neighbors, who
seem to us, at least, to have systematically acted, from the first hour of obtaining
foothold in Japan, upon the policy of driving away all European
traders hut themselves. I t is a policy from which (notwithstanding their
professions) we think they have never swerved.
The English company, it is probable, made an injudicious selection of
merchandise for shipment to Japan; at any rate, from this or some other
cause, certain it is that the business did not prove remunerative; and, discouraged
by this and some other circumstances, the company, in 1623, after
an expenditure of £40,000, voluntarily closed their factory at Eirando, and
withdrew from the country. But they left with an unstained reputation’ and
departed with the esteem of the higher classes and the regrets of the more
humble. I t is useless to indulge in conjecture as to what might have been
the present condition of Japan had they remained. Possibly, long ere this,
she might have had commercial relations established with the rest of the'
world. The departure of the English took place before the bloody persecution
of the Christians reached its height. They left native Christians in
Japan; we are not prepared to believe they would ever have deliberately
assisted in their extermination. I t was, perhaps, fortunate for them that
they were out of the Kingdom before the bombardment of Simabara.
Thirteen years after the abandonment of their factory, the English were
disposed to make a new attempt. Accordingly, four vessels were dispatched,
hut they were ungraciously received at Nagasaki, the only port then open
to foreigners, and occupied by the Dutch, and they returned without accomplishing
their object. The Dutch were now becoming all-powerful in the
east; established on the ruins of the Portuguese dominion at Amboyna and
Timor, fortified in Batavia, masters of the Moluccas, Ceylon, the coasts of
Malabar and Coromandel, they were not likely to admit a rival among them
and to them the English, without doubt justly, attributed the failure of this
attempt to re-establish themselves in Japan.
But they deemed it best, for a time, to keep still; dark days were coming
upon England; the country had to pass through the civil wars that marked
the reign of the first Charles. I t was no time to undertake hold commercial
enterprises. The East India Company consequently did hut little more
for many years than keep up an intercourse with Bantam. They wanted a
time of peace and a firmly settled government before they made further
efforts.
At length, in 1673, the company renewed its efforts to re-enter Japan.
It had received a fresh and much enlarged grant of powers from the King,
and was in fact made little less than a sovereign power in the east. The
ship that was now sent was called the “ Beturn.” A journal, as yet unpublished,
was kept of the voyage; and Eraissinet says it is now in the possession
of the Southwell family at London. He has had access to it, and
furnishes us with many interesting extracts; observing very justly that it
strikingly illustrates three particulars—the remarkable circumspection of
the Japanese, their extreme opposition to the introduction of any strangers
among them, and, above all, their unappeasable hatred of the Portuguese.
Charles II., it will he remembered, had married a princess of Braganza,
and was therefore allied to the royal family of Portugal; and the Dutch
were by no means backward in communicating this fact to the Japanese.
Accordingly, on the appearance of the English ship in the Japanese waters,
she was, from this cause alone, viewed with unusual suspicion. We give
from the journal alluded to above, or rather from the French version of it,
some of the conversations between the English and the Japanese officials.
“ Are you English ? ”
“ Yes. We have come here with the permission of our sovereign, the
King of England, to carry on trade for the East India Company, and
re-establish the commerce which our countrymen commenced with you and
left fifty years ago. We have letters from our King, and from the company,
to his Majesty the Emperor of Japan; ” and with this was handed to the
Japanese commissioner a copy of the privileges of trade already set before
the reader. This was written in the Japanese character.
The governor next charged the interpreter to ask “ if England was at
peace with Portugal and Spain; if our King had been long married to the
daughter of the King of Portugal; whether there were any children of the
marriage; what was our religion, and what sort of merchandise we had ? ”
We answered that just now we are at peace with all the world; that
our King had been married eleven years; that the Queen had no children;
that we were Christians as the Dutch were, hut not papists. As to our
merchandise, the cargo of the ship was a general one.
At the next interview, the governor said, “ it is fifty years since the
English were here; we should like to know the reason of your long absence.”
The civil wars of England, two wars with Holland, and the expense and
danger of so long a voyage were assigned as reasons and seemed to be satisfactory.
The questioning then proceeded :
“ Have you none among you who have been in this country before ? ”
“ Not one.”
“ How, then, were you able to find your way here ? ” •